The Belly & The Beast


The belly and the beast

i in my longing fly out in the night

unveiled and irreverently dressed

i’m lip-stuck and liquored up- picking a fight

i’m the wicked wicked witch of the west

over the alleyways, backward and blind

and the sad and insatiable sprawl

over the marketplace, darkly defined

his desert is sounding a call

he was a businessman twenty-five years

when the angel appeared with his orders

i am making you mine, my divine volunteer

and i’m flying you over the border

and he can’t recall where it all fell apart

was it north of medina or south?

where the prophecy ends and the politics start

where the weapon went into his mouth

and everyone’s sleeping, and he’s flying out

and no one can keep him down now

the morning delivers the news to my door

of my president’s war in the east

but he doesn’t tell me and i don’t know who’s

in the belly and who is the beast

when there’s no place to run to, when there’s no place to hide

it won’t matter whose side you are on

like the bomb in the basement we couldn’t stop if we tried

and it won’t be long, and it won’t be long, and it won’t be long...